The Springboks’ woes are set to continue for the remainder of the year due to the severity of their shortcomings.
rugby365
The Boks’ stuttering form this season stems not from a singular weakness but rather an array of frailties in various facets. There is, therefore, no simple solution, hence the frustratingly slow rate at which the new-look Boks are progressing.
Ironically, it took the first loss in the Heyneke Meyer era at the weekend to illustrate that improvement is well being made, albeit it at a snail’s pace. The performance against the Wallabies was still a far cry from what is expected of a Springbok side, but it was a vast improvement on the shocking draw against Argentina.
Their tactical kicking, a key feature in their territory-driven game plan, was much-improved, as was their defensive effort. Although they leaked two tries, they increased their tackling accuracy from 72 percent in Mendoza to 88 percent in Perth.
It was the Wallabies’ ability to maintain possession, helped in no small part by Meyer’s reluctancy to play a specialist fetcher, that sucked in defenders and lead to the two five-pointers rather than any glaring glitch in their defensive structures.
There’s no doubt that additional changes to the side need to be made. A lack of an out-and-out opensider would be a recipe for disaster against the mighty All Blacks on Saturday, while Morne Steyn’s shaken confidence and suspect defence remains an on-going issue.
It’s important to understand, though, that whilst thrusting the likes of Francois Louw or Heinrich Brussow, who finds himself outside of the squad at present, or play-making prodigies Johan Goosen and Pat Lambie into the starting line-up would speed up the rebuilding process, it would not assure immediate success. Even with these talented prospects, the Boks would still struggle against their Antipodean rivals.
No amount of tinkering or time on the training field during the week will change the fact that the Boks are lambs to the slaughter what Saturday’s showdown in Dunedin is concerned. There simply is no quick fix. Experience is hard earned, and it’s only through experience that the Boks will grow as a unit.
It is imperative, however, that Meyer identifies the players he deems best suited to take South African rugby into the future and afford them a prolonged run in the starting XV in order to build some sort of foundation and continuity heading into 2013 and beyond.
Only the most die-hard of Springbok supporters would put money on a Bok victory this weekend. It would be a monumental upset. A clever tactical approach from the Boks, however, could make for a more competitive contest than many expect.
Although they won’t be aided by the whirlpool Wellington wind, the Boks will do well to follow – and improve – the Pumas’ blueprint, which doesn’t differ too much from the Boks’ current conservative game plan. Attitude, passion and aggressive yet disciplined defence are what served the Pumas well against the All Blacks. The inexperienced Bok pack, in particular, will need to take the fight to their hosts.
Targeting the talented but inexperienced Aaron Cruden ought to be the focal point of the Boks’ strategy this weekend. Cruden struggled to stamp his authority on the match in Wellington and Aaron Smith also suffered from the ripple effect caused by Dan Carter’s injury-enforced absence.
It was clear that Smith struggled without the composed Carter, who takes a lot of pressure off the young number nine. Expect the experienced Piri Weepu to start at scrumhalf and shoulder much of the responsibility from the base on Saturday to ease the pressure off Cruden.
If Ruan Pienaar, who should be given another run as starting scrumhalf, and the Bok back rowers can unsettle the All Black halfback pairing, they could make matters difficult for the world champions. If they are unable to do so and the potent All Black backline gets clean ball, it could be a blow out.
The thing here is: if this was Pieter De Viliers coaching there would be blood in the streets, but it isn’t so we are all expected to be calm and allow HM to develop / build / experiment with the Springboks.
61 @ Loosehead:
Exactly the opposite my friend…. if it was Peter Pienkdas, we would have accepted yet another loss, with less moaning, Vaseline tin in hand and busy bending over!
In fact if it was Peter Pienkdas who had to lose 7 World Class Bokke to overseas or retired PLUS another 7 World Class Bokke out injured and effectively having had to rebuild from scratch, we would have seen true disaster by now…..
Still, there are things and game plans which need to change….
Remember Heyneke has been forced to play without the following, compared to Snorrie:
Gurthro Steenkamp
John Smit
Bakkies Botha
Victor Matfield
Danie Rossouw
Schalk Burger
Juan Smith
Pierre Spies
Ryan Kankowski
Fourie du Preez
Jaque Fourie
JP Pietersen
Heinrich Brussow
Coenie Oosthuizen
Chiliboy Ralepelle
Up until last week he was without Vermeulen and Goosen and Francois Louw too….
Oh, and one can go on….
@ grootblousmile:
Brussow coetsee strauss
54 @ grootblousmile:
Hehehe.
Kempies is so RADICAZLLY different from the rest of the KNOWN UNIVERSE!
Sh1t there are some strange sights wandering the streets of this town.
As for the Lions, well what can one say.
Bastions of professioanlism in business, great media relations and innovative in their negotiating skills with their parent body.
EVERYTHING thee modern sports administration body should be striving towards. Or what say you?
@ smallies:
Met die groep wat hy daar het 6 flo 7 coetsee 8 vermeulen
OK guys, so I’m just a bird who enjoys watching a GOOD game of rugby. Yes HM has only been in the saddle for a few months, but surely any coach worth his salt is able to see where the type of game that SA are playing currently is going. He should be able to think on his feet and change his coaching style to adapt to the talent that he has been given. We have more talented players than we know what to do with – Please HM, make the most of them.
66 @ bean1:
What is GOOD rugby?
Stormers Rugby… most Stormers were extatic with the Stormers boring game this year because they were winning… till almost the end but not when it mattered most.
Sharks Rugby…. they lost 5 in the beginning of Super Rugby (and their supporters will tell you they were missing injured players then, like Heyneke Meyer does at the moment)
Lions Rugby… they lost almost everything and are now relegated but some want Mitchell and Carlos Spencer to coach the Bokke now
Cheetahs Rugby… They lost so many games they had to vote against the Lions in Super Rugby to consolidate their future participation
Bulls Rugby…. they ended nowhere this year
Once again, change does’nt happen and game plans don’t change overnight… it’s a situation you inherit and have to change over an extended period of time.
When the selections for bok coach were being bandied about I put forward that there would only be 3 realistic options for Bok coach.
Gert Smal who has been doing good things with Ireland and has been part of the Bok setup before.
Alistair Coetzee who was the Bok backline coach and has won coach of the year.
Heinecke Meyer who supposedly lost out to Pieter De Villiers at the last minute previously.
I don’t rate AC, never have and don’t think WP will win the Super Rugby title with him at the helm.
I was a fan of Smal, liked the way his team handled the Boks in past tests. he has learned a thing or 2, but HM would be fine too. At the time i pegged HM as a very good manager of systems and people, who may be better served as a DOR type of person than an on-field coach. I still maintain that this is where he excels and that he won’t bring much more to the party than any of his predecessors did, in fact he may bring less as some, like PDV had a certain “maverick” to them.
I don’t peg HM as a man with a great deal of “out of the box” type of thinking and this has been borne out in his current tenure. To me he is showing that he is simply going with what he knows. The thing is, Heynecke is correct in saying that we shouldn’t look at plan B if we can’t even execute plan A correctly. This is to say that plan A may actually be the right one (in his mind) but we cannot judge as they cannot pull it off yet. So when he says that they need more coaching that makes sense if you understand where he is coming from.
The error in his thinking is that the rugby field is a fluid situation demanding a dynamic approach to the game, something that he seems against allowing the players to do. This is where the problem comes out. Against softer teams you can get away with not executing plan A perfectly and still win, but against teams that are sharper and more dynamic and at the same time can front up to us physically we struggle. This was perfectly illustrated not just against Australia on Saturday but 2 weeks before that in Argentina. They could well have won that game and did it by bringing something different and at the same time matching us upfront.
What is clear is that if HM persists with his version of insanity (doing the same thing each time and expecting a different result) will bring us a lot of angst and disappointment.
Do I think that HM is still the right man? Yes, as much as he ever was, BUT he needs to realise that the game plan of forward dominance that he polished so successfully at the Bulls worked primarily because he had several of the best players in the world in their respective positions to use, something that he no longer has under these Boks. The question is, can he work with these players as well as he did with the greats like Gurthro, Matflied, Botha, Rossouw, FDP, et al?
62 @ grootblousmile:these guys are injured or retired. HM has to make do with the current crop of players, who are all very talented.
Where you are missing my point is: the Boks under Ziebie are playing a totally crap style of rugby. They are actually playing the Stormers game [ not the Bulls] without the kicking nous of Grant (
) and Joe Pieteresen ( 
) and none of the attitude on defense and making a crap job of it.
Why is it that Beast, Jannie and Alberts all look tired and pretty average? It is not due to the long season, as the Wallabies and New Zealanders have played in the same S15 and the same number of tests as us? Surely there is a coach to tell Morne to stand closer and flatter? Funnily enough, I remember More as being a running flyhalf when he was in the junior ranks. Hougaard was the kicking flyhalf. That flair has been coached out of him. [ [not all by HM I am sure]
At the moment the team look clueless, poorly lead and poorly coached. The game plan is out of date and HM & JDV are in denial.
Rugby has evolved since 2007, this coaching set up hasn’t.
67 @ grootblousmile:Are you asking me what good rugby is? Don’t you know? Good fast paced, ball in hand rugby which is EXCITING (I know that now you are getting on a bit, this may cause a few heart palpitations), but seriously, the best match I have seen this year was the Province Bulls match last weekend – I culdn’t give a flying fark who wins the match, as long as there is, at least some, entertainment value. I think that you will find that I agree with your keeping HM – I’m not against the man, he must just think outside the box a bit. Verstaan jy?
61 @ BobbejanklimdiebergStormersboySpringbokJan:why do people keep harping on about players who have retired / made themselves unavailable? HM knew that they had all moved on before he took the job. He should adapt or have another plan as a coach.
Are we going to start hearing [granted not from him yet] that Frik Du Preez, Wahl Baartman, Os Du Randt, Johan Styger, Ulli Schmidt, Danie Gerber, Naas Botha, Andre Joubert, Joost, Honiball, Smit, Matfield, Ollie et al would have featured in the squad but they unceremoniously retired before his tenure as coach started?
SA had three teams in the S15 play off’s, so we have the players…………………………….
@ Loosehead:Exactly
69 @ Loosehead:
Could the monster travel that the SharkBoks had to do before this tourney started taking its toll now those players bodies? I think it could. Remember they travelled 4 times across the world. Durban/Joburg/Brisbane/Cape Town/Sydney/NZ/Joburg/Durban. Then after they came back that Sunday night they had to be with the Boks the next day in Cape Town. They were already in training on the Tuesday. I personally think that could be coming back to bite Meyer on the backside as he never gave those players a week off after getting back. They should have been rested for a week. They still had another week after that to train for the Bok/Arg game in Cape Town then head straight off to Mendoza and back. That is unbelievable travel. It will be taking its toll now. The Shark players in the Bok team have not rested since they played the Bulls and then with all that travel they must be buggered really moeg now.
I personally think if they were granted a week rest after getting back from NZ that time and only joining up with the rest of the squad the following week, we might not be seeing so many injuries coming now too. That also comes with tiredness.
@ Loosehead:
That was my point, the game plan that worked with those players doesn’t seem to be working with these.
70 @ bean1:
You see, I’m glad I asked you what GOOD rugby is…. because see, we differ radically on that!
You like open running rugby (and I like it too when it is done well mind you), but I can tell you a game ending in a 5 / 3 score can be bloody good too to the purist…. bloody good if the forwards battle is monsterous, bloody good if the tackling is feirce and devastating, bloody good if creativity by one side is met by sublime defence by the other and vice versa, bloody good if every player on the pitch is motivated and diciplined, bloody good if they apply their minds well in the 5 / 3 scoreline….
Sometimes open running rugby is severely flawed, like we saw from the Lions under Dickie Muir and thereafter… that is helter skelter freekishly farktup rugby, mindless rugby… losing rugby.
Exciting is a relative term…. in your case you want free-flowing and high scoring rugby, in my mind I want a real battle, effective communication, very, very few unforced errors, crunching tackles, strong set pieces, sublime mind games… and effective execution.
To me the WP / Blue bulls match was terrible, because only one side pitched up…. and only to THEM it was a good match.
So, I understand good rugby and I also understand where you are coming from, yet we differ.
What I am on about, about our current situation is that we are not playing ball-in-hand rugby — which is the type of rugby the modern rugby Laws favour…. yet I understand that we in South Africa in general have played this way as a Nation for yonks now, and I do not expect it to turn around overnight.
What I do expect however is movement in the right direction, movement towards a more rounded ball-in-hand type of game, to suit modern rugby.
You see, I do give a flying fark who wins… I want the Bokke to win, every time, whether by 1 point or by a massive margin…. I want to see the Bokke win more against both the All Blacks and the Wallabies than they lose to them…. I want the Bokke to be No 1 consistently.
Hi guys, sorry I could only get back now.
YT, broer I didn’t offer those insights because I was offended by either you or JFK calling HM an ostrich or getting emotional. So please don’t pull out of this discussion because of me, ok?
I just thought I’d share some stuff with you.
So, don’t mind me as Loosehead would say……
75 @ grootblousmile:
So are HM’s Boks playing good rugby?
77 @ Loosehead:
No, they are NOT…. but refer to Morné Pismier’s arguments and you have your answer why.
That said, I am also not happy and would like to see change in game approach and ball in hand rugby.
We are all unhappy, I get that… I’m unhappy too… and want Heyneke to adopt a less rigid approach… with a change in overall game plan.
The man has had 3 month to work with the players, interrupted by a month and a half of Super Rugby inbetween… whereas there has been continuity in coaching at both Australia and New Zealand, where Deans has been with the Wobblies for 5 or so years, Hanson has been with the All Blacks now for almost 9 years (8 of those under Graham Henry).
Perspective is required over emotional irrationality here…. give it a bit of time brother.
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